Yoga-Gate, and Why XOJane kind of F-ing Sucks...

In case you haven't heard, a piece was written and published on XOJane that has caused a complete uproar all over social media. I call this scandal (dun dun duuuuun) "Yoga Gate". Basically, writer, Jen Caron, experienced a yoga class where a "fairly heavy black woman" had the misfortune of placing her mat behind the author's.

Jen, who was unavailable for comment, has attempted to fall completely off of the internet (I think she deleted her Facebook and moved to Calcutta). With good reason. Take a look at this:

"I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined."

So you imagined...or she could have had cramps, or was thinking about her day, or anything else in her life other than your stuck up ass (pun intended).

And here is one of the best responses I've heard about it, by CeCe from Plus Size Princess.

It's all laughs at this point. Not even worth commenting on.

Until this...here is XO Jane's official apology. 

And here is where I have to stop. 

So...I read through the original work as well as a few (very funny) responses. And I knew an apology was looming (like when Dolce and Gabbana thought it would be awesome to dress in blackface, then got slammed, then wrote a BS apology which should have read (in my Super Mario voice) "Dear Brown People of the World, don't be mad with us. Please keep buying our stuff.")

However, I didn't think XO Jane would be...ballsy enough to let their own brown skinned editor take the heat.

Wow. That's astounding.

Make the black girl apologize for the white girl being racist to the black girl.

I mean, that's...simply amazing.

I mean, yeah, Jen sounded like an idiot, a privileged, small minded, small world view having, idiot. Ok, there are lots of those, especially in the blogging world. We make fun of them for a full 24 hours, then send them back into obscurity where people like Jen Caron kind of belong. 

But no... Instead you choose to add insult to injury, XO Jane uses editor Rebecca Carroll as the black shade to cover the light that has been shed upon white privilege disgustingly expressed on their site by a narrow minded writer (who should have been the one to apologize). 

Wow.

If you're going to have a higher up apologize  for the disaster of a PR nightmare you're in XOJane, at least have the guts to have either the producer of said disaster, Jen, apologize and clean up her own mess, or have the mama, "Jane" herself, say something.

Why has the practice become offend the blacks and then offer a half assed "I'm sorry" as if it's supposed to placate stereotyping, offending, belittling, and pissing off an entire ethnicity, not to mention those who are, say human enough, to be ethically sensitive? I'm sorry doesn't fix it. It's like putting a bandage on someone's arm after you've broken it. Only change will fix it. And right now,mi see nothing changing...

Wow XO Jane, you now suck. 

Readers, Your thoughts?